Phil Jones is stepping down as director of the the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit, one of the world's leading climate research centers, after emails were released implicating him in academic misconduct. (Source: University of East Anglia)

The University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit is one of the world's primary sources for climate data analysis and a close partner to the UN's International Panel on Climate Change. Its researchers have published much of the work that has helped the theory of anthropogenic causation to global warming to gain acceptance in much of research community.

Last week the CRU was the subject of a cyberattack. Hackers released a 160 MB archive of stolen information from the center, including a number of emails from the center's director, Professor Phil Jones.

Some emails were merely embarrassing, such as Jones gloating over the death of a climate change skeptic. Others offer signs of misconduct, with Jones appearing to carry out a campaign to remove climate skeptics from peer review boards. The emails also show Jones discussing how he and researchers under him purposefully altered data to make warming trends seem greater -- what seems to be academic fraud.

The information in the emails has not been confirmed or denied, but the center has confirmed a leak occurred and that it is investigating the matter. On Monday Jones announced via a press release that he would be stepping down as director while the investigations runs its course. He says he still stands by his center's research, though, including his own.

The University's Vice-Chancellor Professor Edward Acton supported Jones' decision to step down. Jones said the move was necessary for the CRU to "[continue] its world leading research with as little interruption and diversion as possible."

Supporters of warming have sought to minimize the results. While they have not necessarily questioned the authenticity of the leaked archive, they argue that the leak is a smear campaign. Jones has personally endorsed this theory, writing, "One has to wonder if it is a coincidence that this email correspondence has been stolen and published at this time. This may be a concerted attempt to put a question mark over the science of climate change in the run-up to the Copenhagen talks."

The leak indeed offers unfortunate tidings for proponents of climate change legislation. With the U.S. preparing to commit to unprecedented and expensive emissions reductions at the UN Copenhagen global warming talks, members of the U.S. government are now voicing doubts.

Rep. James Sensenbrenner, Wisc.-R, is quoted as saying the emails "read more like scientific fascism than scientific process." His colleague Rep. Ed Markey, Mass.-D, however complains that such criticism is merely a distraction from the "catastrophic threat to our planet."

Jones, at the center of the scandal, has made a comment that indicates the emails may be valid. He admitted in a post that the emails "do not read well", but dismisses claims of data alteration and misconduct as mere "confusion".

A close supporter of Jones, Lord Stern, author of the U.K.'s 2006 Stern Report, on Tuesday looked to help the embattled climate change movement by speaking out on his views. He says that the evidence of manmade warming is "overwhelming". He added that all views on the topic should be heard, but that the opinions of warming skeptics might not be valid views in his estimation. He called the skeptics "muddled and confused".

Confusion indeed seems afoot, but perhaps more at the CRU than anyplace else. It should be noted that some researchers appear in the released emails to have not cooperated with Jones' campaign and risked their jobs to preserve their academic integrity. Kevin Trenberth was among those who refused to participate and questioned the certainty of the CRU's conclusions on manmade warming.

The CRU has moved to silence one point of criticism. It has agreed to publish missing land surface temperatures shortly. The research center says that 95 percent of its data has been publicly available for "several years". The center says that its conclusions that man is responsible for warming "correlate well to those of other scientists based on the separate data sets held by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS)."

It is apt that the CRU's release mentions America's GISS as the CRU warming scandal closely mirrors the controversy over data alterations by Dr. James Hansen director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). Dr. Hansen's data was shown to have errors both in 2007 and 2008 which exaggerated warming trends.

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